The Malaysian government's announcement on Friday that the poverty line index (PLI) has been revised from RM980 to RM2,208 a month per household is well-received.
It fulfilled a commitment made by the previous Pakatan Harapan government that aims to give a more realistic picture of the state of poverty in the country.
In effect, Malaysia’s PLI increases by a whopping five percentage points to 5.6 percent or 405,441 households from 0.4 percent or 24,700 households in 2016.
Malaysian Trades Union Congress secretary-general J Solomon (left) said the revision illustrated that the government had taken seriously the findings of Philip Alston, the former United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, whose report debunked Putrajaya’s earlier claims that poverty had been almost eradicated in Malaysia. (Read my post titled “UN Special Rapporteur Questions Poverty Rate” published August 26, 2019).
Having said that, he also expressed his hope that the PLI can be further improved.
“This is to cater to the high cost of living in urban areas where 75% of Malaysians are employed, with many of them on low paying jobs and saddled with high household debts due to the spiralling cost of living”, he said.
And he added that the new benchmark for poverty was considerably less than the RM2,700 monthly income MTUC had been urging the government to fix as the minimum living wage, especially in urban areas.
Solomon also emphasized that with the new PLI set at RM2,208, the minimum wage of RM1,100-RM1,200, especially for urban areas, is no longer realistic or in tandem with the cost of living.
The above are valid points because Bank Negara Malaysia had estimated that up to 27% of the households in Kuala Lumpur were earning below the living wage, or the minimum acceptable standard of living.
Liverpool’s flawless home record this season ended yesterday and their hopes of a record Premier League points total seriously dented as they were held to a 1-1 draw by Burnley.
Andy Robertson had brilliantly given the Reds the lead when he met Fabinho's lofted pass with a powerful header in the 34th minute. Yet, the Clarets held firm, and levelled things up when their forward latched onto a knockdown in the box in the sixty-ninth minute to finish.
With 93 points, Liverpool need to win all the three remaining games – if they desire to beat the points record of 100 set by Manchester City in 2017-18. There is no room for error. We shall see if they can pull it off.
Our next match is on Wednesday against Arsenal.
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